We asked our photographers for a little insight. A favourite photograph and why? It started as fun an idea to get to know them and has turned into a lovely series. Enjoy.
This is my favourite photo. Not because it’s the best or the most celebrated, but because it was the first. It was early June in 1994. I was four years old, on a trip to Tasmania with my mother and Nana. I asked for the camera. Not to perform or impress, just because I wanted to make something. There was no doubt, no self-awareness. Just a pull.
I took their portrait. Full length, natural light, no smiles. It’s not far from how I shoot now.
It wasn’t skill. It wasn’t even taste. It came before all that. Before influence, before it became a job, before I knew anything about what a photo “should” be. I just wanted to hold something of that moment. It was just the three of us. My grandfather stayed home. And for a long time, they were my whole world. That instinct to witness quietly, reverently, was already there.
That photo feels like a seed. Something planted early. Something I keep returning to without always realising it. Even now, the work I care about most comes from that same place. A quiet need to witness, to honour, to offer.
If I could speak to that boy now, I’d say, Keep going. You already know what matters.
Photography might be the tool, but the point is to grow. To pay attention to what matters.
To keep returning to that same quiet instinct I had as a child. Before I knew what I was doing, but somehow already knew why. And maybe that’s what faith is too. Not having the full picture, but still raising the camera anyway.
Joel Pratley Photographer
This image remains one of my all-time favourites!
I had just returned from living in the UK, drifting between time zones and identities, when I met a model named Charly Brown — enigmatic, magnetic, and strangely familiar, like someone I'd dreamed of long before we ever met.
I had this vision: a shoot deep within the Australian Museum, surrounded by skeletons and shadows. At first, they said no — but something drove me to push.
I arranged a meeting and somehow, I convinced them to let us in.. The museum was ours. Silent. Empty. Ominous. Still.
As the last echo of the security guard’s footsteps faded, we were swallowed into the gloom. Eerie sounds enveloped us — the floor groaning underfoot, the static hum of display lights, the low creak of history settling in its bones. Every corridor whispered, every shadow seemed to twitch. The taxidermy animals — glassy-eyed and ancient — felt almost animated under the moody, flickering light.
We shot quickly, instinctively, as if something was watching. Something waiting. The images were haunting — cinematic and strangely alive. This image marked the start of a 15-year creative collaboration with Charly Brown — my muse, my mirror. Years later, we released a book together: Layers of the Kaleidoscope Qween. But this photo.. this moment in the dead hush of a museum, after dark, surrounded by creatures that never really died.”
Chrissie Hall Photographer
This is probably my favourite image I’ve taken. If not the favourite, then the one I remember taking most clearly. It was a rare snow day in Tokyo in 2018, just days before I moved back to Sydney.
I grabbed my Hasselblad 500cm and rushed out. It’s a fully mechanical, and having forgotten my light-meter, I had to rely on intuition and muscle memory to expose the film properly. Moments after this shot, the winder froze and I went home.
The two boys reminded me of my younger brother and me, which hit me as I was framing the shot. It felt personal; a quiet, fleeting moment that somehow said everything about that time. I’d been documenting Tokyo daily in my final months there and this felt like the perfect closing image. There’s a sense of nostalgia and stillness in it that I keep returning to. It captures more than just a snowy block of apartments— it’s memory, transition, and a kind of quiet magic.
Seiya Taguchi Photographer